I'm sure you've heard on the news
or at least read somewhere on the Internet
about the issues customers have been having with computer repair shops
copying their customers private data for latter "enjoyment", cough-geek
squad-cough. Then I thought to my self, would a doctor start
telling everyone about a certain rash in a area you might not want
other people to know?! Would a Priest tell everyone in the
their church what you confessed last Sunday?! So why should
IT people be able to browse through people's private data, especially
when it's not needed to fix most computer issues?! The only
time I can see going through someone's data is when data recovery is
involved. Even then, data recovery software could be designed
to restore data with out the technician seeing the data them selves.

If we can't trust Priest or Doctors (mental or physical) with
our issues, a lot of us might be less likely to see them to resolve
those issues. And we'll just end up with a lot more pissed
off sick people in the world with unresolved problems. This
is the 21st century and computers have become almost a necessity in our
daily lives. We use them to hold all kinds of
secrets about our selves. And should this wonderful device
decide to fail, we will have to trust in someone to fix our "box" of
secrets. But how can we do that with out the trust?!

And so, I'm calling on all ethical minds in the IT community to help me
come up with our own kind of "Hippocratic
Oath". This document could even be considered a legal
contract that we sign to protect our customers from our
selves. I haven't decided on a draft yet. So I'm
asking that you submit your ideas and we all vote on a final draft.
It is time now that we the IT community take an oath to do no
harm to those who entrust us with their "box" of secrets.